Day Reaper

by Melody Johnson

I stared at Dominic on the floor next to me. I was here, wherever “here” was, after having my throat ripped out, and after seven days, I’d survived. Seven days.

  “Patience, Ronnie,” Dominic answered for me. “We’ll be out in a moment.”

  Chapter 3

  The living room and kitchen outside the bedroom were as bare, neat, and utilitarian as the bedroom had been before being destroyed by my vampire-sized temper tantrum, but the many people and their suffocating emotions made the room feel infinitely more cramped. Logan and Theresa glared at me from the far corner of the room, their anger like rubber band snaps against my skin. Rafe and Neil stood beside me, their hovering proximity like flies swarming overripe fruit.

  Jeremy’s wary gaze looked back and forth between me, the bedroom, and Dominic as if he were trying to determine who had won, who he needed to guard against, and how much damage we were still capable of. The old me might have reassured him that my emotions were under control, that I’d obviously freaked, but I wouldn’t freak again, and the old me might not even be lying. The new me let Jeremy squirm, because the smell of his fear tasted like chai, just like Dominic had always described, and I liked the taste of chai more than I liked Jeremy.

  Ronnie, on the other hand, wasn’t looking at the wrecked bedroom at all. She didn’t waste one second looking at anything other than my face. Her fear was even more poignant than Jeremy’s—sweeter, spicier, and substantially more savory—but the taste of her fear wasn’t the least appealing because I almost liked Ronnie, and I still felt responsible for her. The old me definitely would have reassured her that I was fine, that we would both be fine, but even as a vampire, my guilt over her current circumstances was overwhelming. I was struggling now, but I’d adapt and eventually I’d survive. I honestly wasn’t sure about Ronnie.

  Her face was like looking into the mirror at myself that first time—her sallow cheeks, prominent features, and gray complexion like the reflection of living death—but she’d been a vampire for weeks now, almost three weeks to be exact. After only a fraction of that time and a glassful of tepid blood, I looked more alive now than she did.

  Keagan was the only person in the room I genuinely liked—my complicated addiction for Dominic excluded—especially now that the squawking bird of his annoyance had joined Ronnie in silence. I suspected that when I asked them to catch me up on the last seven days, the squawking would return and in full force, but I couldn’t help my reaction toward Keagan any more than he could help his reaction toward the whining, helpless grate of Ronnie’s voice.

  My relief at seeing him and the simple comfort of knowing I had a friend in the room vibrated from my pores like a gong.

  Ronnie cringed and covered her ears. Rafe and Neil tried to hide their laughter, but I could see the shake of their shoulders. Logan narrowed his eyes, knowing his son was the cause of that sound and not liking the strength of such a reaction, not one bit.

  Keagan smiled, and a twitter of chirps, pleasant and light, lit the air. I opened my mouth to ask him about his affinity toward bird sounds and hesitated. I didn’t have an affinity toward gongs; the sound had escaped from me before I’d barely even felt the emotion.

  I glanced at Dominic, wondering what he was feeling and why I couldn’t hear it on him like I could hear the minutiae of everyone else’s emotions.

  He shook his head. “We’ll work on that,” he said, which I suppose was answer enough.

  “Where are we? What are we doing here?” I asked, glancing at the group of vampires around me. Having all of them here in one room made the absence of one obvious. “Where’s Sevris?”

  No one moved or spoke or so much as blinked. In a roomful of people who didn’t even need to breathe, the silence could stretch further, deeper, and more damning than I’d ever imagined possible.

  Neil broke under the pressure. He cringed and stared determinedly at the nearest wall, as if the chipped paint might produce divine intervention from my questions.

  I narrowed my eyes on him. “Did something happen?”

  Rafe shook his head. “That’s just it. Nothing’s happened. Sevris disappeared the night he left to fetch you from your apartment, and we haven’t seen or heard from him since. None of us have.”

  I bit my lip. “Maybe he’s just gone to ground to wait out the Leveling like the rest of you. He’ll show up, I’m sure.”

  Suddenly, everyone found the walls just as fascinating as Neil had.

  Dominic squeezed my shoulder. “Perhaps we should start with the easier of your three questions.” He moved his hand in a flourish to indicate the room around us. “On such short notice, I constructed an underground safe house for vampires warded against the Damned. I knew we’d need it for the Leveling. Luckily, we had it for your transformation.”

  “Protection against the Damned sounds great, but what about the Day Reapers?” I asked. “In seven days’ time, how did they not find us? God knows everyone is gunning for us, and leading the charge is High Lord Henry.”

  Dominic’s glacier eyes cut me. “Don’t call him that,” he chided.

  I grinned cheekily. “It’s his name.”

  “He prefers being addressed by his full name and title, and you know it.”

  “He’s not here to care how I address him, now, is he?”

  Dominic glared at me, but even his stern expression couldn’t hide the rush of Christmas pine that suddenly filled the room.

  I shook my head, taken aback. “You’re scared.”

  “No, I’m terrified. And if you fully understood our predicament, you would be too. The Day Reapers are the Chancellor’s coven, and I stole his right as Master of that coven to transform you. Do you think he’ll allow such a slight to go unpunished?”

  “That’s more than just a ‘slight,’” Rafe said on a snort. “You broke Council law, and a crime of that magnitude—” he finished his sentence on a high whistle.

  “What?” Neil asked, wringing his hands. “A crime of that magnitude what?”

  Dominic met Neil’s worried eyes with a steady, uncompromising gaze. “A crime of that magnitude is punishable by death.”

  “So it’s true,” Ronnie breathed, her words more air than voice. “Cassidy is a Day Reaper?”

  Keagan’s bird let loose a loud bleat.

  “Of course it’s true,” Jeremy snapped. “Can’t you see the color of her talons?”

  “We’ll have to paint them. I have polish,” Ronnie said, sounding excited to help. She gasped suddenly, and I could hear the cogs of her mind fit some unfathomable piece into the puzzle. Literally, I heard it. “Is that why Bex paints hers?”

  Keagan’s bird let loose a loud string of bleats.

  “What did I say?” Ronnie asked, her voice a high whine.

  The bird bleated louder.

  I ignored Ronnie and the telltale bleat of Keagan’s bird in favor of facing Dominic. “Maybe if I avoid sunlight and paint my nails, the Chancellor won’t discover the truth,” I suggested.

  “You will hide your existence as a Day Reaper from one of the greatest, most powerful entities of this world with nail polish?” Dominic leveled me with a look. “Like how Bex hid her true self? Are you willing to build an underground fortress and avoid sunlight for millennia?”

  “It worked very well for Bex,” Keagan murmured. “Until Cassidy came along.”

  Dominic snorted. “It worked so well she lost her Second, her night blood, and her coven.”

  “She didn’t lose her coven. She left it,” Ronnie said, her voice very small. “She left us.”

  For once, Keagan’s bird remained silent.

  “Can we focus? I’m seven days behind here and not getting any younger,” I said, attempting to lighten the mood.

  “Technically, neither are you getting any older,” Keagan said, grinning. He’d always understood my dark humor—hence our friendship despite the age diff
erence.

  “Jokes,” Logan whispered to Theresa, as if with our heightened senses we couldn’t hear him. “Two of his brothers are dead, one is being raised by the man hunting us, we are vampires, the life I built for him is being trod underfoot like fucking crumbs, and he’s making jokes.”

  Some kind of sound expelled from Keagan, but it wasn’t a bird this time. Maybe the sound of a bird being strangled.

  “You don’t need nail polish,” Jeremy said, interrupting my eavesdropping. “Locked away as they are, the Day Reapers aren’t our biggest problem at the moment.”

  I blinked. “Locked away? What are you talking about?”

  “Maybe we should all sit for this conversation,” Dominic suggested. His hand was suddenly at my waist, leading me to the nearest couch before I’d even conceded to sitting. I pulled away from Dominic just to be obstinate and sat of my own volition next to Keagan and across a coffee table from Jeremy and Ronnie. Rafe and Neil shifted to flank Dominic.

  “Happy? I’m sitting.” I said, primly. “Now, start talking.”

  Dominic nodded. “We needed a safe haven, somewhere that Jillian, the Damned, and daylight couldn’t touch you. I briefly considered your apartment, but I needed to remain at your side for the transformation, and your apartment was designed beautifully to keep vampires out, not safeguard them once inside. So I brought you and everyone here,” he said, waving a hand to encompass our little dysfunctional family, “to wait out the remaining hours of the Leveling. Jillian had amassed too much of my power and strength for me to fight her and win, and combined with her army of Damned, the threat of Day Reapers, and your vulnerability as you transformed, I had no choice. My one advantage was that Jillian thought that killing you had killed me. Once the Leveling passed, I anticipated regaining my abilities and power as Master vampire of New York City, and Jillian would realize too late that I still lived.”

  “But you didn’t regain your abilities and power?” I asked.

  “No, I did. I regained all my strength, power, and abilities just like I thought I would.”

  “But?” I pressed.

  Dominic’s expression hardened. “But I didn’t regain my coven.”

  I frowned. “You regained your abilities and power, but you’re no longer Master?”

  “I regained the abilities and power of a Master, but not of New York City,” he specified.

  “I don’t understand. You lived. She lost, so just march over there and take back what’s yours. She doesn’t have the abilities and powers of a Master anymore. You do, so what’s stopping you?”

  “An army of the Damned and a coven of vampires who no longer want me as their Master.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t know that. They could be missing you. They could feel held hostage by Jillian and the Damned. They—”

  “They opened their hearts to her,” Dominic said, and the words scraped from his throat, each syllable taking its own slice. “It’s why I can’t feel their presence like the ebb and crash of an ocean tide around me, pulling me in multiple and often conflicting directions, sometimes buoying me up and just as often dragging me under, but always moving, ever changing, and constant. I am not linked to them anymore, not like I once was as their Master. And the few of us,” he said, gesturing at everyone in the room, “are no match against them.”

  I bit my lip, the synapses in my brain firing, dismissing, and generating new thoughts faster than I’d ever imagined possible. “We’re no match against them,” I agreed after a moment, “but we’re not alone. We have Greta and her police force, Meredith, Dr. Chunn, and Rowens. We have more allies than just ‘the few of us.’”

  “They’re human and nothing but a liability.”

  “In a fight, sure, they’re a liability. So was I, yet you kept me around. Just because you’re the brawn doesn’t mean we can’t use their brains. We also have my brother, who is both brawn and brains, and Bex, who—”

  “We don’t have Bex,” Jeremy said. “Not anymore.”

  “Not that we ever really did,” Ronnie muttered.

  “Yes, we did. We do,” I corrected myself. “She’s our ally, and when push comes to shove, she’ll have our backs.”

  Ronnie looked away, a petulant skeleton. Jeremy, for all his snide bravado, didn’t reply, and even Keagan wouldn’t meet my gaze. Theresa and Logan hadn’t resumed their conversation, but they hadn’t joined ours either. They just watched, Theresa’s eyes darting between Dominic and me, cautious and wary, and Logan’s filled with something mutilated, like the remains of a Damned’s victim. Two Damned’s victims in particular, I supposed.

  “Dominic?” I asked, gently at first, but when he wouldn’t meet my eyes either, I snapped “Why don’t we have Bex? What the hell happened?”

  “Jillian happened,” Dominic finally said, running a frustrated palm down his face. “While we waited out the Leveling and your transformation here, Greta and her SWAT team raided 432 Park Tower.”

  “Oh God, is she—”

  “Greta is fine,” Dominic interrupted. He closed the distance between us and squeezed my shoulder, rubbing his thumb in comforting circles over my skin. Damn my body’s reaction to him. I didn’t know what I took more reassurance in: his words or his touch. “And so is Rowens and most of their team, but Greta and Rowens are the only ones who remember there was even a raid. When her team infiltrated the tower and confronted the Damned, the Day Reapers entranced everyone, protecting their goddamn secrets better than they protected anything else, even themselves.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “What are you saying? I’ve seen them in action myself; the Damned are no match for the Day Reapers.”

  “They shouldn’t have been, but when the Damned attacked, the Day Reapers couldn’t simultaneously fight the Damned and entrance the humans. With their efforts and focus divided, the Damned won.”

  I covered my mouth. “Is Bex d—”

  “I don’t know,” Dominic said. His hand tightened on my shoulder, but I didn’t draw any comfort from his touch this time. “More than likely, she’s imprisoned with all the other Day Reapers in the Underneath, the silver-lined crypt beneath the coven where I imprisoned Jillian during her punishment.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to let everything that had happened in the last seven days soak into my brain. It felt like a nightmare, unbelievable and unreal, but just because I hadn’t lived it didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. Didn’t mean I couldn’t fix it. “Okay. I need to talk to Greta.”

  “Greta?” Ronnie asked, her voice more an expulsion of air than actual sound.

  “After hearing everything that’s happened, you want to talk to Greta?” Jeremy asked, his tone scathing, but just as full of disbelief as Ronnie’s.

  I looked between the two of them and raised my eyebrows. “I’m sensing you have a problem with me talking to Greta. I’ve worked with Greta for years, and she—”

  “She’s the reason the Day Reapers failed!” Logan exploded. He knocked Theresa’s fluttering hands aside and charged toward me. In another life I might have stepped back, but in this life, I calmly watched him approach. He was a large man, barrel-chested, muscular, and over six feet tall, but he strode across the room with human-slow steps. In this life, I was stronger and faster, and as I’d just proved to myself with Dominic, I no longer had to avoid a physical altercation. Strangely enough, the fact that I didn’t want to avoid it was what held me in check.

  Logan loomed over me on the couch, using the full intimidation of his height to his advantage as he shouted, “If it wasn’t for Greta, the Day Reapers wouldn’t have been distracted. They would have won against the Damned and stopped Jillian’s ascent to power.”

  I nodded and then tipped my head sideways. “And what would have happened to all of us?”

  Logan froze in his hovering. “What do you mean?”

  I spread my hands to indicate the barren walls ar
ound us. “Dominic couldn’t fortify this bunker against the Day Reapers because I’m a Day Reaper. So if Greta hadn’t interfered and the Day Reapers had won against the Damned, what do you think would have happened to us, considering that Dominic, not High Lord Henry—”

  Dominic groaned.

  “—transformed me?” I finished.

  Logan pursed his lips.

  Keagan raised his hand next to me.

  I nodded at him. “Yes, Keagan?”

  Jeremy rolled his eyes. “We’re not in high school anymore, idiot. Still, you manage to become teacher’s pet.”

  “Still, you manage to be an asshole,” Keagan shot back. To me, he said, “The Day Reapers would have attacked us and punished Dominic for transforming you. We might have been the ones imprisoned in the Underneath.”

  “Precisely.”

  Logan let loose a low growl, and Dominic, who had previously been watching this all play out without interrupting, growled back.

  “Greta didn’t know what she was doing when she did it,” Logan said roughly, refusing to back down despite my logic and Dominic’s growl. “She planned a raid under the mistaken confidence that she could win against the Damned and protect the city. And look where that got her! She lost, the city is in ruins, and our only chance to overthrow the Damned is locked away, as good as dead!”

  I shook my head. “Listen to what you just said. ‘Greta didn’t know what she was doing when she did it.’ She did the best she knew how under the circumstances. She did what she thought was in the best interests of the city. The Day Reapers, on the other hand, knew exactly what they were doing. They prioritized the secrecy of their existence over protecting the city from the Damned, and look where that got them!”

  I took a deep breath. Knowing it wouldn’t loosen the pressure around my heart or calm my temper, I took it anyway. “Greta and I are a team. Together with our medical examiner, our environmental-science expert”—I tipped my head at Dominic—“and a whole team of police officers and lab techs, we uncover the truth, solve crimes, and bring the guilty to justice. But it only works as a team; Greta didn’t know what the hell she was doing when she did it, and since I wasn’t there to help her, this mess is just as much my fault as it is hers. We failed this city, and I need to talk to her so we don’t fail it again.”